Name: Dionne Warwick.
Age: 80 next week.
Status: Queen of Twitter.
Don’t you mean one of the greatest pop singers of all time? That was then. This is 2020 and what we care about these days is your social media presence. Have you seen her latest tweets?
What about Walk on By, Anyone Who Had a Heart, I Say a Little Prayer … Yes, that’s all very well.
Do You Know the Way to San Jose? Actually, I don’t.
Trains and Boats and Planes … I don’t know if you’ll need to take all of them.
I’ll Never Fall in Love Again. Oh come on, there are plenty of other fish in the sea, unless you are President Macron, of course.
Look, can we get to the nub of why we’re writing about Ms Warwick, please? Oh very well. She had a hilarious Twitter exchange with Chance the Rapper over the weekend.
How hilarious? She tweeted him out of the blue. “Hi, @chancetherapper,” she said. “If you are very obviously a rapper why did you put it in your stage name? I cannot stop thinking about this.”
It’s a fair point. What was his answer? He didn’t really give one. “Sorry I’m still freaking out that u know who I am,” he tweeted back. “This is amazing!” Calling herself Dionne the Singer, she replied: “Of course I know you. You’re THE rapper.”
Then what happened? She moved on to Canadian superstar The Weeknd, tweeting: “If you have ‘The’ in your name i’m coming for you. I need answers today,” and “Why? It’s not even spelled correctly?”
Another very fair point. Did he offer an explanation? No, just more delight that she knew who he was: “I just got roasted by Dionne Warwick and I feel honored! You just made my day.”
She’s great – still socking it to these upstarts at almost 80. Her record producer son, Damon Elliott, is not so sure. He joined in: “Mom that’s it! As soon as this quarantine is over I’m taking your iphone away from you … time to go back to a flip phone.”
Naturally, she had an answer. You bet. “Good luck getting into MY house without a working key,” she replied.
Does she often engage in these skirmishes? She certainly does. Last year, she got into hot water when she said Beyoncé was not an icon and compared her unfavourably with Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle and other stars with real staying power.
I love her more and more. She really is an icon!
Not to be confused with: Her cousin Whitney Houston.
Do say: “Let’s rap together” – as Warwick told her new pal Chance.
Don’t say: Anything about Tyler, the Creator.
